Getting less than five hours of sleep all week was also associated with higher mortality rates.

"The use of repeated measurements through follow-up questionnaires would have helped keeping track of sleep habits changes", they noted in their paper.

Researchers examined data from almost 44,000 people who took part in a 1997 Swedish medical survey - and then tracked how many died within the next 13 years.

From there researchers performed tests on the participants to study their reaction times. "More so, our study suggests the importance of longer episodes of sleep, rather than a split sleep schedule, though further evidence would be needed to test this directly".

The study has its limitations, as participants were asked to recall their sleep patterns rather than being observed sleeping, but Åkerstedt has an idea about what might be driving this difference in mortality.

Average sleep duration at weekends and the percentage of those saying they did not feel rested at waking, did fall with age. Stuart Peirson, an expert in the human body clock who was not involved in the research, told The Guardian it "fits with what we do know about sleep", offering a more nuanced view on how much sleep we need to get. "If you eat OK during the week and you splurge a little on the weekend, you probably aren't hurting your health, but if you eat crap all week, no amount of Brussels sprouts or kale that you eat on the weekends can make up for that", he said. "People can not learn to live on insufficient sleep and they may not be aware of their reduced cognitive abilities".

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